Sora no Woto Ep. 1

Hey look, another anime just started, and it’s apparently about how music will heal and protect a war-ravaged land. That sounds exciting. So who’s the main character?

Oh. It’s a little girl. Well, maybe she just looks young. Maybe she’s really smart and capable. What can she do?

Oh. She’s a trumpeter. Well, it is about music protecting and healing the land. Maybe she’s really good at the… bugle–

Oh. Wow, she literally carries her bugle in her hands wherever she goes.

She’s like a child with a new toy. Well, it’s just the first episode. Maybe she’ll get smarter; maybe she’ll get better at playing her valve-less, slide-less horn. Let’s look at the rest of the cast; maybe the rest of the cast is interesting–

Oh. To be accurate, I’m not calling it another K-On! I’m just saying the characters look like they’re from K-On! Whether or not the blatant plagiarism bothers you, whether or not moe shit bothers you, that’s really not the point of this post. I’m here to criticize the first episode on how it delivers a story. Just from the start of the anime, I knew something was wrong. Kanata wakes up on a moving train in the company of men twice her size. Yeah. They see that she’s awake and decide to give her a share of the war booty.

Hey, she gets a cut. She must not be so bad at her job.

Candy? Are you serious? I know women typically get paid less than men, but she gets paid in candy? They say it has “been half a year since the armistice.” So six months after the cessation of war, she finally gets paid and it’s in candy. What did you get, Mr. Rolled-Up-Sleeves-to-Show-Off-the-Tats?

Yeah, you. He tells her, “Honesty is fine. Work hard, girl!” but he’s probably in a tontine of valuable paintings with the other fellas.

Yeah, burnt sugar sure is expensive. I couldn’t make that on my stovetop or anything. So he asks her why she joined the army, which is a fair question cause the army is no paradise–

We’re obviously not off to a hot start, but maybe the story is good. This is the first episode after all; it has to be compelling. You always try to hook the audience in from the beginning, right? Okay then, what happens in the first episode?

An owl steals a priceless memento.

And Kanata is really determined to get it back.

But she gets herself into trouble because she’s retarded. Meanwhile, some festival celebrating an old myth is going on.

And it looks very odd. So anyways, back to Kanata. I guess here’s the tension: she’s trapped in a deep gorge all by herself. I don’t know why we should care about her, but fine… how will she be saved?

Through the power of sound… uh, resounding. Or something. I guess it’s supposed to be deep, but it’s like “Duh.”

And then she’s magically saved. End tension, end episode. Yay…

No, it’s okay. I won’t be needing the pills tonight. I’ll just rewatch the episode.

Yeah, it wasn’t horrible. Slow is fine… but being a meandering mess isn’t okay. My beef is that the first episode just has no focus. If Sora no Woto does end up getting a plot, why isn’t it given to us from the very beginning? Compare it to another “slice-of-life” anime about an alternate universe with a heavy reliance on mythology: it takes Haibane Renmei only 90 seconds to introduce the main character and part of the plot. Why is Rakka falling? What significance does the crow play? What is the crow trying to save Rakka from? Right away, I know that one of the ‘conflicts’ in the story is solving the mystery of the crow. Right away, I want to know more. The rest of the first episode is slow too, but just because of that opening, I’m hooked for at least a couple more episodes. As for Sora no Woto, 24 minutes go by and the only thing that was remotely intriguing was the giant underwater skeleton.

I don’t know what to make of this, really. I doubt that there will be any guns fired or people dying, despite this technically being a war story. I get that feeling of…well I dunno, really. I guess I might have been bored, but not Kimi Ni Todoke bored. It gave me kind of the same feeling as when I was watching 07-Ghost for a while. It was kind of…quiet.

Really? I recall a shounen fight in the first episode of 07-Ghost followed by the main character being chased out of some academy while being chased by some really bad Sephiroth wannabe. As for Sora no Woto, at the moment I just get a really poor man’s Haibane Renmei vibe.